‘Blitz’ movie review: Steve McQueen’s contrived war drama flattens Saoirse Ronan’s powerhouse

Saoirse Ronan and Elliot Heffernan in a still from ‘Blitz’
| Photo Credit: Apple TV

Steve McQueen’s Blitz arrives as a curious confluence of contradictions — a World War II epic that both adheres to and subverts the conventions of its genre. The Oscar-winning filmmaker inks his pen with nostalgia, only to scribble a biting realism across the page. The resulting tension crackles with promise but struggles to hold the line.

Blitz meanders between sprawling spectacle and tightly wound intimacy, taking aim at weighty themes: race, resilience, and survival amid the ashen wreckage of 1940s London. Though the ambition is undeniable, the film seems to misfire somewhere along its execution, leaving its lofty aspirations gasping in its smoke-choked ruins.

The story centres on nine-year-old George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), a biracial boy whose mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), reluctantly places him on a train evacuating children from the city to the safety of the countryside. George, however, refuses to abandon the world he knows. Before the train can reach its destination, he leaps off, determined to find his way back to London and reunite with his mother. From there, Blitz unfurls as a Dickensian odyssey —  with George encountering a rotating cast of characters ranging from kindly protectors to outright villains — rendered with McQueen’s characteristic visual rigour but tethered to a narrative that often feels uninspired.

Saoirse Ronan in a still from ‘Blitz’
| Photo Credit:
Apple TV

As George, Heffernan shines with a luminous naivety, his boyish innocence running headlong into the wreckage of war-torn England. This tension is perhaps most evident in George’s encounters with a ragtag band of thieves led by Stephen Graham’s Albert, a cartoonishly Fagin figure who teeters on the edge of caricature.

George’s journey is interspersed with scenes of Rita’s parallel struggles, as Ronan imbues her character with a tender fortitude, navigating the drudgery of factory work. Rita is the film’s aching heart. In one standout scene, she performs a ballad for a live BBC broadcast — co-written by McQueen and composer Nicholas Britell — a moment that aches with longing and the bittersweet hues of the film’s soul. While life-or-death stakes fuel George’s arc, Rita’s story feels little more than a quiet simmer, often leaving her marooned in beautifully rendered but narratively isolated vignettes.

Blitz falters in its uneven balance of these twin narratives. This disparity results in the film’s patchwork rhythm with its emotional momentum diluted by McQueen’s love of digression — a strength in his Small Axe anthology, but a gamble that doesn’t quite pay off here.

Steve McQueen has long mastered the alchemy of turning sweeping historical tides into something that feels achingly personal — grand narratives distilled into the pulse of a single human moment. Blitz tries to follow suit, but its compass wavers. Some moments bristle with urgency. Others, however, lean too heavily on contrivance, as if McQueen’s screenplay doesn’t quite trust us to grasp its themes without a guiding hand.

Stephen Graham and and Elliot Heffernan in a still from ‘Blitz’
| Photo Credit:
Apple TV

Where Blitz does succeed is in its refusal to whitewash history. McQueen challenges the sanitized myth of wartime solidarity, exposing the fractures beneath the veneer of “keep calm and carry on.” In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, George finds solace with Ife (a soulful Benjamin Clémentine), an immigrant whose quiet wisdom offers some comfort in the chaos around them. From racist bullies on the evacuation train to the casual slurs hurled in passing, Blitz paints a picture of a nation grappling with its own prejudices even as it faces an external enemy. In these moments, the film feels most alive, its critique pointed and necessary.

And yet, Blitz never fully coalesces. McQueen appears torn between his auteurial instincts and the weighty expectations of an Oscar-baity war drama. His attempt to critique nostalgia while luxuriating in its glow creates friction the film never entirely smooths over. Whether this tension feels like bold vision or unsteady footing depends largely on what you bring to the table as a McQueen devotee. It’s far from his most polished effort, but it still pulses with the urgency and humanism that define his oeuvre.

Blitz is currently streaming on Apple TV+